Wednesday, 28 June 2017

I participated in Me Made May again this year . I wore Me Made clothes each day and shared pictures of myself on Instagram.

I am a bit late, but here are my thoughts on a fantastic month of wearing, photographing, Instagramming my me-made clothes.

I love using the selfie timer on my phone! I staged my photos in several venues:

my bedroom

outside in the garden

in the kitchen

I wore mostly different clothes each day, really because I wanted to try everything I have made rather than that be my normal routine. There were things I wore more than once (Cleo pinafore dress and brown shorts), and there were things I didn't wear at all.

I made lots of connections on Instagram. I am now following lots of 'new-to-me' sewists, and have new followers myself. I love Instagram!

May is a great month to choose for a 'Me-Made' month as the weather usually improves through the month, and here in the UK we are putting away our Winter clothes getting out our Summer wardrobe by the end of the month.

Looking at me 'Me Made Wardrobe' I realise that I sew with lovely colourful patterned fabric. I am really happy when I open my wardrobe doors now and see the colour in there. But... if I want to wear all 'Me-Made' I should sew some plain coloured basics, eg jeans, skirts, t-shirts to go with it all. I know that I am not alone in this - I see this in most reviews I have read!

I have had jeans on my to-sew list for a while, in fact, the brown shorts are a toile for a good fit.

I show cased my most recent makes, my second Tiramisu dress from Cake Patterns , and a maxi dress from New Look 6280

I also wore some refashioned and pre-owned items, such as these brown trousers (bought from a charity shop and altered to fit) and this corduroy jacket from eBay.

Thursday, 11 May 2017

Linking up with Patio Postcards for a photography meme. The idea is to take 3 photographs that are linked in some way. Here's 3 I took on my dog walk yesterday up to Highdown Hill. I love walking along paths through trees in the Spring with the dappled sunlight and bright fresh greens

Tuesday, 2 May 2017

Have you seen this method of cardmaking? You take one sheet of double sided paper and cut it up as per a template, and use the pieces to make lots of cards. Here it is on Pinterest.

We tried it at our Christmas crop with a 6 x 6 paper, and each made 4 cards, which we then gave to each other. This template gave sketches for placement of the pieces of paper. You can then add your own embellishments and sentiments.

We really enjoyed that, so we decided to big things up a bit and go for a 12 x 12 sheet of paper, and we used this template.

I used a sheet from a stack of papers from Studio Calico, called Sundrifter. This sheet is Pocahontas. It has feathers on one side and is pink with polka dots on the other. You can see that I favoured the feather side! I loved the look of the cards where the papers had been matted, so found a pack of coloured papers that I had bought from the Range, which as it happened looked beautiful with this paper! I made 16 cards this time.

I borrowed a feather die, and cut several feathers from the plain papers. Some have a 'Happy Birthday' sentiment, some I left plain so I can use them for another occasion.

I love how they turned out! I haven't made any cards for a long time, so now I have a nice pile to choose from when I need one. I think I will do this at Christmas - just got to find a nice double sided Christmas paper.

Sunday, 16 April 2017

I am back to report that I have a new camera, and I am all inspired to take more photos again! My old Nikon SLR is over 10 years old now, (and it was an old model when we bought it!), and is so heavy to lug around over my shoulder. I wanted a lighter camera that was a bit better than a 'point and shoot'. My new phone has a fairly decent camera for that. So we went into Jessops, and had a really lovely assistant who spent ages with us looking at the small mirrorless cameras. I chose the Panasonic LX100, as it has a decent size sensor, and lots of dials and buttons for manual adjustment. It looks a bit retro in the silver too!

It has its first outing up to London on my birthday on a really sunny Sunday in March. We were headed for lunch in the Shard! Here's some photos:

The Shard is the tallest building in London. We were headed for the 32nd floor for the restaurant, about half way up.

We were so lucky with the weather! Bright, sunny and clear. Here's a view towards the financial district with the 'walkie talkie' and the 'gherkin', other iconic buildings.

Looking to the East, with Tower Bridge in the foreground, and Canary Wharf in the background.

That is St Paul's Cathedral in the centre of the photo.

We had a lovely lunch, lovely food, well presented and brilliant service. I thoroughly recommend the restaurant. It was so lovely to spend the day with my family on a day out!

Friday, 14 April 2017

My crafty friends Burnice and Tash bought me a china decorating workshop for my birthday! You will know that we like a workshop. This one was run by Elaine at Made and Making in Ditchling, East Sussex.

WE had the choice of a plate, a small tray or tiles. Tash and Burnice chose the plates, I chose the tray. We were able to choose from lots of pretty transfer papers. You cut out the shapes you want, then soak the paper in water and the transfer slips off the backing and sticks to the china. Easy!

Here I am tracing off the beach hut shape. I chose 5 different patterned papers and then cut them up and rearranged them on the tray.

Here's a picture of Burnice playing with the placement of her papers

Burnice and Tash hard at work! You can see that the workshop is really cute! Lots of lovely things hanging around for inspiration.

Here are my beach huts ready to place on the tray

The final products (well not quite, they have to be fired now). Aren't these plates cute with their washing lines? Tash did the clothes and Burnice did the quilts.

We had a great day, and are all keen to go back and do a Christmas plate later in the year!

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

My friend Tash and I went to a machine embroidery course a couple of weekends ago. Burnice was supposed to come too, but unfortunately she had a fall and broke her shoulder so can’t sew at the moment. We went to Lara Sparks Embroidery just a few miles from me. Lara makes lampshades and cushions with her distinctive coastal, meadow and homely scenes. We had seen her at a craft fair back in the Spring and decided to spend the money we would usually have spent at Sandown Quilt Show on the course.

Lara’s workshop is in her lovely home and is filled with lampshades, pictures and cushions that she has made and shelves overflowing with fabric! After a bit of practise we were encouraged to decide on whether we wanted to make a lampshade or cushion, and to look at her stencils to decide what scene we would like to embroider.

I chose the pier scene. First I drew round the stencil onto my linen to get the basics of the pier, then began to embroider! It is such fun! It doesn’t matter if you go a bit wobbly – in fact, it looks better if you do! I did each section of the pier at a time, embroidering the shape of the buildings, and then the understructure and legs of the pier. Next, I chose some fabric to make the domes of the buildings. They were fused on to the linen and then embroidered to make the lines of the roofs and to keep them on! Lara is a fantastic teacher, keeping a watchful eye on us at all times! She drew the big wheel and roller coaster for me, which I then embroidered. Final touches were the blue lines of the sea and a few seagulls.

Tash chose to do a lampshade with foxgloves and bluebells, and she did more applique that me. There were 2 other students there, one of whom made a lampshade with grasses, and the other made a cushion with flowers and seed heads. Lara was really keen that we had a finished product to take home so spent extra time with us showing us how to make up our lampshades and cushion.

Here is Tash’s lampshade being tested with a lamp.

And here’s mine, in pride of place on the sideboard in my hall. I am so thrilled with it! I think it is the best thing I have ever made! I absolutely love it, and have to keep looking at it!!

Tash and I can’t wait to go back for another go! We are looking forward to when Burnice can sew again to take her.